Social enterprise and public procurement/Research Protocol

Introduction

This document sets out the Research Programme of Action 2 under the SEEM Development Program (DP) i.e. SEEM 2. The core aim of SEEM 2 is to "increase equal opportunities for employment through encouraging an increase in economic activity of Social Enterprises (SEs)". This is to be achieved by increasing the ability of SEs to access greater levels of business in the public sector. The underlying key assumption is that SEs deliver a wider range of social (and environmental?) benefits than their private sector counterparts, including equal opportunities employment, and that a greater level of social benefits can be delivered by increasing the size of the social economy.

The DP intends to help social enterprises and voluntary and community sector organisations to access procurement opportunities made available by the public sector, to help the public sector purchase better labour market outcomes through its mainstream procurement practices and to help social enterprises to provide high quality employment opportunities for people from Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities, women, people with disabilities and people aged over 50 years.
From DP Application form

"The BEST Procurement Development Partnership is focused on improving the prevailing conditions in the labour market in order to achieve long term structural change that increases equality in the labour market. Disadvantage in the labour market is created not only by the relative situation of the "disadvantaged" individuals but also by the value ascribed by the labour market to those individuals and their situation and willingness to include them."

The DP is focused on achieving a change in practice within the East Midlands Region that other parts of the country can learn from, that provides evidence of use to national policy makers and ultimately that informs European policy.

BEST Procurement operates under Theme D and contributes to achieving the Community Initiative Plan (CIP)'s recommendation that the social economy needs to address sustainable routes to regeneration and employment rather than isolated initiatives. The DP's aim is to increase the conversion rate between public expenditure and labour market equality within the East Midlands Region. To do this it will be necessary to improve value for public money in targeted areas and establish the social economy, particularly social enterprises and voluntary and community sector organisations, as key players in achieving this goal.

The main objectives of the DP are to:

• Understand and influence the demand for added value in public sector purchasing;
• To develop purchasing frameworks and specific contracts that deal with issues of sustainable development;
• To undertake supplier development of social enterprises and the VCS; and
• To develop an evidence base that addresses key areas.

The SEEM 2 project is split into two distinct, but related programs of interventions as identified in the Action 1 research, and indicated in the design of the Partnership Schematic shown in Figure 1

Figure 1 BEST Procurement Partnership Schematic
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In the model above, the supply-side interventions are being delivered under the Social Enterprise Development Interventions component and the demand-side under the Local Procurement Practice/Policy component. SDRC's role is to investigate the interactions between actors within the components and between the components over the two year programme to identify the changes that have occurred and theorise on the changes and the reasons for these changes in order to inform public policy.

Research Methodology [this is supposed to be in boxes...can you see what its trying to say - if not will send sepapertly]

This methodology emerged from the approaches outlined earlier and from the availability of data. Qualitative and quantitative data were used to collect three types of data. Table 3 below notes the data types, analysis and methods used.

Table 3 - Research Methodology

Literature Review

Quantitative data Quantitative data Qualitative data Questionnaire online Ordinal data plus nominal data held elsewhere Semi structured interviews – digitally recorded Correlation coefficient Relationship modelling Textual analysis Method: SPSS Method : MS Access Method: Atlasti

Table 3 shows that the literature is the will focus on which the research rest. These methods will employ grounded theory [refs] and discourse analysis [Barton and Hamilton 2002] as an analytical tool in analysisng findings of the semi structured interviews using Atlasti a Non-numerical data textual analysis, the online quesrionnanire will use a Social Science Programme for Statistics (SPSS) to validate and cross reference numerical data the Ordinal data will provide a structure of community, partnerships and relationship building during the process using a Human Resource modelling concept [Peter??? Luton] using MS Access.

The presentation of this table illustrates the methods employed to gain access to new insights and to develop the research into an intellectually rigorous piece of investigation. The literature review on topics such as: on social enterprise, public procurement, change management [maybe] and the role of government [s] as an enabling device to question: How, and under what conditions, do market development activities geared towards public procurement, such as the East Midlands BEST Procurement programme, contribute to the sustainability of social enterprises. Moreover in attempting a theory or paradigm shift we need to understand what this entails. The idea that an assortment of facts, concepts and constructs can lead to the development of a theory contains as Cohen and Mannion (1991) noted that it

is itself a potential source of further information and discoveries. It is in this way a source of new hypothesis and hitherto unasked questions: it identifies critical areas for further investigation: it discloses gaps in our knowledge; and enables a researcher to postulate the existence of previously unknown phenomena. (Cohen and Mannion 1991:15)

In using the ‘mixed method’ approach one can increase the validity (it has some foundation: based on truth, legally acceptable) and reliability (trusted predictable, dependable) of the research data. The validity of this mixed method lies in the notion that this study needs to extrapolate from data the complexity of the prevailing paradigm within the social enterprise arena. Furthermore the reliability of the data lies in way in which it is collected and tested. Both sets of data will be tested rigorously and monitored through a series of interventions from the funder and colleagues at SDRC and elsewhere using WIKIbooks [over to you Tim] in order to escape the criticism of researcher subjectivity. Moreover this eliminates the problem of using one method alone for as Shipman (1981:147) argued it would produce “a one-dimensional snapshot of a very wide and deep social scene” . A ‘mixed method’ supports Shipman’s (1981) identification of a variety of methods to provide a cohesive rather than complex illustration of a fairly new field of research. What is needed for this particular research is an approach which identifies evidence of the transference of business/management theories into a social economy setting as it moves into the public procurement arena.